Sic Semper Tyrannis

Good Points AO

I have a problem with those who say: We were wrong in 1978 when we said anyone is better than the Shah.    Actually it was what needed to be said for the revolt to succeed at the time.   I think what we need is another successful revolution (this time as Nazanin Afshin Jam says: A Progressive Revolution), and need to copy many of the steps that were successfull in 1978.   Anything is indeed better than IRR.   

Oktaby

As I wrote somewhere else, dictatorship is a zero some game.  One should either be 100% democratic or 100% dictator.  As you correctly point out, Shah was neither.  He allowed his greatest opposition, the Mullah mafia, to grow right under his nose and to become the monstrosity that overthrew him.  At the same time, he was desperately trying to silence the socialists and communists who he thought will turn Iran into a Soviet satellite.  

But you are correct.  We must learn from our past.  The 1979 devolution was almost a century in the making.  The tell tale signs were everywhere, a weak despot as an absolute king, a large religious class heavily influenced by the clergy, a pseudo-intellectual elite with its own vision of "democracy"...etc.  We, a as nation, dropped the ball.   

AO jaan

of course.

Mehrban

Samsam has a point about the oppression of minorities and women.  The women power that you speak up is more an act of desperation and is not a result of them being empowered by the IRI in any way. Women are protesting in the streets because that's the only way that they can vent their frustration.   

Sam

I think the instinct of rising against the Shah stemmed from a feeling of inferiority,  a certain sense of provinciality that Iranians suffered from and the activities of the ruling class did not help.   In spite of IR's gender apartheid for example, oddly enough, women have found a new strength and are in the forefront of the fight against IR .  

Re;inferiority

Mehrban jaan, regarding the inferiority issue some may beg to differ such as the  millions of sunni Kurds,Baluch and other religious sects whose rights of citizenship is as of 2nd class subjects. As well %50 of the population Iranian women whose rights in the eyes of the regime is of half of the men. Add to it all ideological groups(ie;nationalists) who are at odds with this regime and treated like refugees in their own country . All the groups above are treated as segregated entities deprived of some or most of their civil rights . no one in the group above can ever run for the office of the so called presidency.  

Cheers dear !!!

Path of Kiaan Resurrection of True Iran Hoisting Drafshe Kaviaan //iranianidentity.blogspot.com //www.youtube.com/user/samsamsia

The revolution has had 1 great achievement

The biggest achievement of the revolution is to have made a vast majority of Iranians less religious and more open minded.

Believe in Iran of tomorrow. IRI will be gone in 2010.

Please read my article on "How to unite against IRI" at:

//iranian.com/main/blog/ptehrani/how-unite-against-iri

or

//www.opednews.com/articles/How-Iranians-can-unite-aga-by-Parviz-Tehrani-100109-166.html

Long time ago I read a Jewish slogan on a poster, in a place

of higher learning: "Our future is in our past" it read. I take that to mean what made our history in longitudinal terms and how our heritage was formed and took shape. I also take it to mean understanding what transpired in recent past horizontally. The longitudinal, is a different discussion even it has bearing o this.

The descent of Iran to what we are witnessing today many centuries later has same roots but a different path. Oddly enough, a western minded progressive Shah for various reasons was the key builder of an amazing number of mosques, to his own demise. Meanwhile, the period of prosperity & progress had much to do with two superpower status of the world, as did the demise of Iran and the end phase of one super power. It also has had to do with luck & circumstance as IRR thrived at a time when capitalism was at its peak and human rights out of fashion. The world is changing and another super power is on its way out. We lost 79 that should have never happened, as it had little to do with will of Iranians and everything to do with manipulation of their discontent with Shah. So, Iranians will have to win this one on our own and we are in for a turbulent ride with odds stacked against us. However, if history is an indicator we have always come through when it counted most. We'll see if that was pure luck or has something to do with our nature as a people. My money is on Iranian people even if we have performed poorly for a while.

OKtaby

We Must Go "Beyond King of The Mountain" mentality...

We Must Go "Beyond King of The Mountain" mentality to building democratic institutions

that replace the culture of the ambitious self serving politician that has proved to be wasteful and  partisan for a non adversarial model based on cooperation; a new model called competitive democracy.

Mehrban

I agree that Shah would not have survived (literally as well, since he was dying of cancer anyway), but we could have a better result if we had approached the  process with a little more sanity and with a little bit of thought, and had not allowed our emotions to get the best of us.  We allowed a charlatan and a "snake oil" salesman to take over our country, and our destiny, lock, stock and barrel.   

AO jaan

There is no question in my mind about what you say.  But no one feels inferior to today's upper classes ie. the clergy or the sepaah. How could they? ;-)

Undoubtedly Iran is far worse off than it was 30 years ago, I was really reaching to find something redeeming.  I am not even sure changing inferiority for misery is a good trade (I am just kidding, I know it is not a good trade).

Revolution was a disaster in every way imaginable.  But I can not envision how Shah's regime would have survived under the circumstances either.  

Mehrban

Perhaps.  But that was Shah's shortcoming (among other shortcomings).  He could have done little things for the lower class to prevent the mullahs from using their position in the society to take over the "hearts and minds" of the lower class.  But he didn't.  That being said, the class distance in today's Iran is much higher than it was pre-1979.  There is very little left of Iran's middle class, which was Shah's greatest accomplishment in the major cities.  Today, you are either very rich, very poor or a working poor.  The worst is yet to come.  Wait till they take the subsidies away.  That's when you will see real despair.   

Okay, you are not going to like this

But before the revolution or whatever it was, there was a large class of Iranians that were not even considered to be considered.  Maybe it was a perception but that is how it seemed, they felt inferior.  I think what drove most people to revolt (?) was a sense of inferiority and I fault the ruling regime with it.  Iranians no longer feel inferior, they feel miserable.  Maybe this is what the revolution achieved.

Vildemose

You're correct.  I think that the IRI has set us back many decades, especially in certain areas such as women's  rights.

I read the gibberish by the Leveretts.  Thanks for the site.  I'l  see what I can do. :-) 

COP

It's very true.  A Lebanese friend of mine (Sunni Lebanese) used to tell me not to get ahead of myself when I talked about Iran.  His opinion was like your father in law.  His point was that at least 80% of Iranians are backward, religious zealots.  He used to say "don't look at Tehran or other big cities.  The true Iran is backwards and religious".  Perhaps he was right.  I think that a great majority of us, at least in 1979, were like that.   

Excellent. We have

Excellent. We have regressed in so many ways that it's almost impossible to catch up.

AO. Have you seen the latest by the dynamic duo Leverttes?

 This is the personal site: Please take them to task.

//www.raceforiran.com/the-obama-administration-moves-toward-regime-change-in-its-iran-policy

Dear AO

It is not denial so much as it is ignorance, arrognace, stupidity and flat out anti-natinalism!

After the Islamic revolution my father-in-law used to say that this is it - this is Iran......the thirty or forty years that the country had before the revolution, was a fluke....a mere break in a long history of opression and violence......Until we Iranians wake up and smell the stench...we'll have this mess and mentality to deal with.

Thanks to Islam and its peaceful approach to...everything....

____________________

IRAN BEFORE ISLAM  

____________________

Hovakh

Amen my brother, amen...

How about all the things we have now, that we did not before?

Poverty, mass addiction, fundamentalism, terroists by the thousands, Chaghookesh as elite of the society, molla & akhoond running a country after hundreds of years of working on rules of aftabeh and sex with shotor, smelley & filthy ambassadors and ministers, prostitution, export of women to other countries, deepening of khorafat, systematic rape of men, top of the chart on every negative measure, and bottom on anything decent....

Open your eyes and see all the beauty erteja' has brought us as their gift.

Samsam Jaan

you're right.  I can tell you stories of family members who lived the life of luxury under Shah.  But they allowed--and encouraged-- their children to become revolutionaries.  After the revolution, the same children were executed, the family members became war refugees and they never emotionally recovered from the trauma.   Now, they're dying one after another of heart attacks, etc., all that traumaa taking its toll on them.

Your Mola story is appropriate.  

Shad Zi my brother. 

heh

 برادر گمنام

خدا دستتو طلا بگيره که دست مريزاد و اينم جوکه ملا و کشيدن دندونی که درد نميکنه

دندان ملا درد می کرد. نزد دندان ساز رفته گفت: دندان مرا بکش. گفت: دو دینار بده ، ملا گفت : یک دینار بیشتر نمی دهم، دندانساز نپذيرفت. ملا ناچار شده دو دینار داد. پس دندانی که درد نمیکرد به او نشان داد. چون آنرا کشید گفت اشتباه کردم دندانی که دود میکرد دیگری است. آنرا هم کشید. ملا گفت: خواستی از من پول زیادی بگیری اما من از  تو زرنگتر بودم ، ترا گول زه کاری کردم که همان دانه ای یک دینار تمام شد.
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